aw man i feel old

Colin went to his senior prom tonight with Grace. gah! wasn't that kid being drug around to soccer games and gymnastic practices like 2 seconds ago?!? i'm pretty sure that for the first 5 years of that boy's life he was convinced that he actually lived in the car.

i can't believe that he went from this...

to this...

and now to this...

so handsome :)

p.s. please excuse my hair in the first picture it was apparently against my religion to cut or brush it.
p.p.s. and this lindsey is why to this day why i cringe at the word perm. my mother's hair circa 1996. love ya mom, and your hair now :)

"I'll be back."

i believe the great arnold schwarzenegger once said this in some little movie called the terminator. it's crunch time and that means every spare moment i'm not studying is spent sleeping, eating, running ( ha! not nearly as much as i wish...) or trying to remain calm by talking myself out of spiraling panic attacks. so for the moment the blinders are on--cross your fingers for me and keep me in your prayers because right now i could definitely use all the luck and help i can get :)

study day at the beach :)

when you have to study, it doesn't get much better than this...
81 and sunny :)
and yes, i actually did get quite a bit of studying done-which means that i can actually go back and do this again

2:30pm

6:10pm

7:20pm

8:15pm

presque isle certainly knows how to throw a good sunset :)

nothing very interesting has been going on recently, mainly just studying with the occasional necessary life things like running and food shopping to break up the monotony. wegman's was my exciting break this weekend since i hadn't been in around 3 weeks and meal's were starting to get interesting, i would however recommend strawberry jelly and nutella sandwiches if you run out of peanut butter.

keith is coming up this weekend and i can't wait to see him, definitely something to look forward to <3

i heart nature

there must have been millions of these yellow flowers, i felt a bit like dorothy in the poppy field.

erie's very own ginormous tree of life

and i of course can't let a perfectly good tree go unclimbed :)

action shot of ms abbie jumping from the rocks

fighting the current...

after board review this morning followed by what may have been the most frustrating opp exam i've ever taken linds decided that we needed a nature break and she was right. we went to asbury woods, the same woods that keith and i went to before but apparently we were in the wrong place before because this was soooo much more open and it had water! it was nice to get out and stretch my legs on a hike in the sunshine especially since we have our first set of mock boards tomorrow. this will include a fun filled 8 hours of straight testing, let the party begin.

blessed

I am so incredibly lucky and blessed to have such amazing parents. a lot of people would think that driving 6 1/2 hours across the state of pennsylvania to have lunch with their youngest daughter is crazy. and to some extent it is, but it's also really really cool :) i had a psych practical in the morning so mom and dad timed it pretty well so that they'd get to the wonderful city of erie right after i finished. we went to a place for lunch that reminds me of a restaurant that we used to frequent annually in wildwood called 'The Captain's Table' before heading down to presque isle.

we drove around the island and got out of the car around the eastern most tip to take a a 'quick' walk by the water. This turned into a long hike to a light house that seemed deceptively closer than it actually was.

and of course a trip to preqsue isle isn't complete without getting ice cream from sarah's so we stopped on the way back before they headed south to complete their weekend tour of pa by visiting with kristen and craig in pittsburgh.

the visit was much too short but eons better than having to wait another month and a half to see them and provided enough of a push to help keep me motivated to study.

coming down the homestretch

school is like a giant roll of toilet paper. in the beginning i couldn't imagine ever getting through the whole thousand 'sheets' and it seemed like it was never going to end. looking at the whole bit seemed extremely overwhelming so i've learned to take it one day at a time with my blinders on, not looking too far ahead into the future and leaving my successes, frustrations and failures in the past. but like they say with toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. at this point in the year i keep vacillating between the sheer panic of boards and my excitement to finally get out of my windowless lecture hall and the chair that i'm sure is going to leave a permanent imprint on my behind.

I had my last 'systems' exam this morning and while psych was interesting, i'm not sorry to see it go. i also got some amazing news this morning in between the time my exam ended and my board review class started. after hours of research, phone navigation (i've decided that automated phone services are perhaps the worst invention ever ) emails, voicemails, being told that they only accept 4th years, i have to have such and such rotations completed before i even apply and jump through 17 rings of fire i FINALLY got an elective. an elective that i want and am ECSTATIC about. I'll be at community volunteers in medicine which is a nonprofit primary care facility in west chester next august :) soooo stoked about this!

mom and dad are coming to visit tomorrow yay! so at least while i'm studying for yet another exam ( one day i'm going to count how many tests they've put us through...) i have something awesome to look forward to, especially since i haven't seen them since winter break!

one little piggy went to the market...

apparently they drew the line when it came to practicing suturing on each other. don't worry because it was okay to blindly jab at each other with needles when it came to phlebotomy, but not so much as to when it came to learning to actually throw stitches. for this i am grateful :)


this was actually really neat. we learned several different stitches which are each good for different things depending on the friability of the tissue, situation of the trauma, if if its in an area that needs to be aesthetically pleasing etc. if it's a laceration where you need to control the tension of each stitch-- the interrupted stitches are the most common for trauma and something like a running stitch is more common in plastics which will leave a nicer scar, but you also have to consider that the person was healthy enough to undergo elective surgery to begin with and didn't just come into the er after their car lost a battle with a tree...

we also learned how to properly 'gown' meaning the procedure that surgeons and anyone present in the operating room must go through in order to become and remain sterile. i'm suppperrr glad we did this, it entails quite a bit of detail and i'm pretty sure i would have looked like an idiot otherwise, ok i still look like an idiot but at least i'm an 'informed' moron. there's one part of the sequence when your arms are in the sleeves of the gown and you have to put on your gloves without taking your hands out--kinda felt like a little kid with mittens on who was a teensy bit retarded trying to tie her shoes, not gonna lie.

p.s. above is my actual pigs foot :)